The Customer Loyalty Initiative was tasked with developing a 'customer loyalty program' targeted at young professionals and other high checkout demographics, but available to all. This program was developed by the Customer Loyalty Initiative to create a new customer experience, provide a unique variation on reader's advisory for high checkout market segments, and to increase customer loyalty among our target demographics. Handpicked seeks to engage customers that frequently place items on hold but do not browse the collection, as well as feature the breadth and depth of the library's collection.

A prototype of the idea was presented to the Customer Loyalty Initiative and selected as a viable program to pilot. As the program is fairly time intensive collecting and bundling materials, we decided to start with a subscriber goal of 25 customers over 4 branch locations (chosen in regards to our target demographic). We also decided to use displays and hand-selling to initially attract subscribers to the service. Individual staff are responsible for 5 bundles/subscribers to distribute the work load and create a scalable, customizable program. To emphasize the human touch, each bundle includes the staff member's first name.

Handpicked was piloted at four branches in March 2015 and exceeded its moderate subscriber goal after only two weeks of a display driven campaign. We received overwhelmingly positive interest and feedback from customers, including, “Absolutely awesome service; why haven’t you done this until now?!” We are looking forward to testing the subscription hold process for our bundles in June, and to expand the service to more locations throughout the system. We've learned to be especially mindful of providing a variety of materials (long and short form), taking special care to not include older, tattered materials, and allowing that a shared, central theme may not pique everyone's interest equally.